Today I have a step-by-step tutorial of one of my favourite pieces yet; Newt Scamander from Fantastic Beasts! I painted the drawing about a month before the movie came out, so the sign for the Blind Pig is not accurate, but I hope you can forgive me for that.

If you want to know how I start a new drawing, I would suggest you visit these tutorials:

1. First of all, I picked the images below as reference pictures: one to serve as reference for the global painting and for the initial pose of Newt, and one for his face ( I wanted him to face towards the spectator).

2. Set up a blank document (this one was 6500 x 9000 px with a 300 DPI) and start with your basic lines.

Just make sure you fill up those basic shapes and lines. As you can see in the next image, there are some differences in value in the buildings: The ones that appear to be close by have a higher value than the buildings that are in the background.

2. Time to present Newt! I added a new layer and set up his basic lines in a complementary colour so that I would not get my lines mixed up. I adjusted his height a little bit with the help of the Transform option (Crtl + T).

3. I continued drawing Newt by defining his initial line-art with a darker colour and made progress on his facial features. The buildings in the background as well as the ground got a more smoothed look as I gradually worked on top of the original lines.

4. As a next step, Newt got some more shading and value to add details.

5. Colours! I wanted to have an orange – blue palette for this drawing, so I made an orange gradient- and blue gradient layer and set them to softlayer, the image below shows the result of that change.

I then kept playing with some colours layers and their options before I settled on a definitive palette. Furthermore, the street got a neat texture (found on http://www.textures.com )

6. Portrait time! I set up the face reference next to my drawing document and began painting his gorgeous face. ( To see how you can paint a portait from photo reference, click here: Reference tutorial )

7. The following steps included more definition in colour as well as adding more details and shading to the surrounding buildings.

8. I felt like there was someting missing so I started adding Frank into the painting. Deliberatly placed him between the buildings, hoping it would create a better dynamic in composition.

9. And I thought the Niffler should be in there to! In the background you can also see a Hippogriff. Again, made sure that the objects that I placed in the background have a more ‘merged’ look.

10. Color dodge time! For the final painting I added several more layers to play with colours, lights, ‘special effects’. As you probably have noticed I added a sign to the rights, as well as the title in the front. The blue and orange clouds you can see at Newts feet are a seperate color dodge layer. ( To see how to color dodge, click here: Color Dodge )

And that is about it! Any thoughts on the next tutorial? Let me know in the comments below.

1. Pick a suitable photo of yourself: In the picture below the background is a bit messy, but the light on my face is good. No make-up photo’s usually are better to work with!

2. Start with your base ( base background and raster; check this photo reference tutorial to see how : Reference tutorial) and set up your basic facial features. I started with an orange base to ensure a warm skin tones. Then I chose a complementary blue as background colour.

3. Next I brightened the colours more and added some highlights. As you can see, the base colour of the hair is a purple hue, which would seem odd at first. But is really works as a base colour!

4. Time to define the colours! Below you can see the hair evolving from a purple colour to a blonde shade by applying lighter red/brown colours on top of the base. I also smoothed the skintones and gave the dress another colour (which worked better with the background)

5. It is color dodge time! The previous image lacked brightness and contrast. which I added in this step. Also, I added more colour dynamics by color dodging (to see how you can color dodge, click here: Color Dodge )

6. Next step is adding textures for colour dynamics. I was able to add a popping pink colour. (To see how I apply textures, click here: Texture tutorial )

7. And add finishing touches to complete your portrait!

Hope you guys find this helpfull! I would recommend you check out the following tutorials as well to get a better sense of my drawing process: